Diabetes Management
In this capstone project, I will be exploring diabetes and its management among patients. Diabetes is a health condition that results in increased sugar in the blood. Normally, sugar is regulated by insulin. High blood sugar occurs when the amount of sugar being produced by the body is more than the insulin can regulate or when one of the organs involved in insulin production fails. The patient that I will use for this project is C.L. She is the mother of one of my high school friends, and she agreed to be a participant for my capstone project. She suffers from diabetes type 1, and since it is chronic and irreversible, one goal that I deem relevant is making C.L. used to inject insulin by herself. Diabetes is relevant to my area of practice because it requires nursing and leadership, which my practice area provides.
This paper will cite various researchers to get information for the management of diabetes type 1. The first one is Subramanian et al. (2016), who discusses the management of diabetes using insulin therapy. The second researcher is Lucier & Weinstock (2020), who discusses the management of the disease, focusing on how to diagnose it. The third article is by Iqbal, Novodvorsky & Heller (2018), which primarily focus on diabetes type 1 management for clinicians. It includes such things as glucose monitoring, preparation, and administration of insulin. The fourth article is by Kahanovitz, Sluss & Russell (2017), who mainly focus on the different diagnosis methods and some aspects of management. DiMeglio, Evans-Molina & Oram (2018) explore a different aspect of the disease ranging from diagnoses, causes, and management. All the articles provide information that I see in nursing, and all the information is reliable. I know they are reliable because they have outlined the procedures and methods used to collect and analyze the data. All the articles were studies, and none of them presented opposing views.
Subramanian et al. (2016) propose some ways of managing diabetes types, and some of the ways that they mention require leadership. They mention patient education on diabetes, which requires leadership. They also mention glucose monitoring and support from different types of professionals who will need to be coordinated by the central leadership. The strategies such as patient education may benefit a patient because she will know how to manage the condition by herself and reduce the reliance on nurses. Support from different health professionals will help identify the symptoms that a patient displays and recommend treatment or management. Subramanian et al. (2016) recommend patient education as one of the methods to manage diabetes. Patient education is a patient-centered approach to diabetes management that empowers the patient with information such that she knows what to do when she starts displaying the symptoms. As a nurse leader, I will focus on empowering the patient with information about diabetes type 1 and getting different health professionals to work towards helping the patient manage the condition.
The Minnesota state nursing board has a lot of regulations that govern how nurses operate. The board issues license of practice to nurses, and those that do not follow the regulations gen their licenses revoked. This means that as a practicing nurse in Minnesota, I will not have the regulations set by the nursing board regarding diabetes patients. Any treatment that I provide the patient will have to agree with the board’s regulations (Nurse Practice Act, §§ 148-171-LPTA). After reading the Nurse Practice Act’s boundaries, I was surprised that nurses registered in Minnesota could work under the advanced practice registered nurses, dentists, and other physicians in American territory and Canada as long as their actions are legal in Minnesota. Therefore, this Act allows me to work under different APRNs and physicians (Nurse Practice Act, §§ 148-171-285). The laws also bar me from practicing after the expiry of my license. While working with the C.L., I will strive to uphold the highest ethics. This means that I will not divulge personal information or act to harm the patient.
References
DiMeglio, L. A., Evans-Molina, C., & Oram, R. A. (2018). Type 1 diabetes. Lancet (London, England), 391(10138), 2449–2462. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736 (18)31320-5
Iqbal, A., Novodvorsky, P., & Heller, S. R. (2018). Recent Updates on Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus Management for Clinicians. Diabetes & metabolism journal, 42(1), 3–18. https://doi.org/10.4093/dmj.2018.42.1.3
Kahanovitz, L., Sluss, P. M., & Russell, S. J. (2017). Type 1 Diabetes – A Clinical Perspective. Point of Care, 16(1), 37–40. https://doi.org/10.1097/POC.0000000000000125
Lucier J, Weinstock RS. (2020). Diabetes Mellitus Type 1. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (F.L.): StatPearls Publishing; 2020 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507713/
Nurse Practice Act, §§ 148-171-285.
Subramanian S, Baidal D, Skyler JS, et al. (2016). The Management of Type 1 Diabetes. In: Feingold KR, Anawalt B, Boyce A, et al., editors. Endotext [Internet]. South Dartmouth (M.A.): MDText.com, Inc.; 2000-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279114/